Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Director Spotlight #15.10: Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money

Director Spotlight takes
a look at an auteur, shines some light on the director’s body of work, points
out what makes them an artist, and shows why some of their films work and some
don’t. This edition’s director is the eternally enthusiastic Martin Scorsese.

NOTE: Look, I’m tired of typing it out for pretty much every
entry, so here it is in the opening: there’s going to be spoilers in this
thing, and in almost every entry of Director
Spotlight. There’s a lot more to a film than the basic plotting, which is
only a small part of the enjoyment as far as I’m concerned. Still, if it’s
going to bother you, I’d highly suggest not reading ahead until you’ve seen the
film in question.

Grade: 76/B+

Everyone needs a paycheck. With the exception of someone as
wildly successful as Steven Spielberg, sometimes directors just need to take on
a project in order to make something, anything.
That was the case with 1986’s The Color
of Money, a sequel to the 1961 classic The
Hustler. Scorsese agreed to make the film in order to show that he could
make a commercial film (and, perhaps, get The
Last Temptation of Christ greenlit). But while it’s certainly one of
Scorsese’s least immediately personal projects, that doesn’t make it entirely
impersonal.

“Fast” Eddie Felson (Paul Newman, reprising his greatest
character) was once a promising young pool hustler, but now he’s an aging
liquor salesman who never quite achieved greatness. One night, Eddie meets
Vincent Lauria (Tom Cruise), a cocky young man with a natural talent for pool.
Eddie takes Vincent and his girlfriend/manager Carmen (Mary Elizabeth
Mastrontonio) on the road to show them the ropes to hustling, but eventually he
parts with the two. Eddie goes back to pool to face off with Vincent at a major
championship in Atlantic City.

The Color of Money
is Scorsese’s slickest film to date, sometimes to a fault- the grit and
unbearable tension of Scorsese’s best films is largely absent, and the too-80s
soundtrack doesn’t help natters. But it’s still a Scorsese movie, and the technical
bravura on display is still striking. This is Scorsese’s second film with
cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and like After
Hours, its assured, dynamic use of whip pans and tracking shots(along with Thelma Schoonmaker’s typically
energetic editing) gives the film a lot of momentum. It doesn’t totally
disguise the film’s episodic nature, but it makes for a number of memorable
episodes- I’m particularly fond of the long tracking shot around the pool table
as Cruise dances/shoots to “Werewolves of London”, which frames him almost like
a god, albeit the most childish, cockiest god in the world.

What might be most notable about The Color of Money’s style, however, is how Scorsese takes his time
to establish character and environment. Mike D’Angelo handled the film’s
fantastic opening better than I could in his Scenic Routes column, but I’m also
knocked out by the dinner scene between Eddie, Vincent, and Carmen. Scorsese
has always been a master of using slight camera movements to communicate
something about his characters, and his pushes towards Vincent as Eddie calls
him “an incredible flake” show the dent in the young man’s ego even as Cruise
barely changes facial expressions, making him seem closer to Newman in a way
that’s essential for the film to work.

Cruise was a rising star at this point (Top Gun was released the same year and shot him into the
stratosphere), but with the exception of Risky
Business, he hadn’t really had a chance to show how good of an actor he
could be. It’s an archetypical Tom Cruise role, to be sure, but he’s quite good
as the ostentatious, relentlessly brash showoff Vincent, his goofball dances
and affectations suggesting a caffeinated version of Newman’s character in the
first film. What makes this more than just a standard-issue Cruise performance
is the lack of confidence beneath the
surface, best shown whenever Carmen suggests she might leave him.

Mastrantonio hasn’t done much since the early-90s, and it’s
a damn shame considering how good she is at playing women who are infinitely
smarter than their male counterparts (see also: The Abyss). Carmen might actually be the most interesting character
in the film- she’s manipulative of Vincent, but that doesn’t make her less
affectionate. She’s wiser to the world, but she still doesn’t know when she’s
pushed Vincent too far (her casual nudity around Newman irks both men, and a
later confrontation connected to it is the tensest scene in the film).

But even with strong performances from Cruise and
Mastrantonio (and some nice early roles for John Turturro and Forest Whitaker
as a coke-addicted Eddie protégé and a hustler who pulls the wool over Eddie,
respectively), the film is a Newman showcase. Many thought Newman’s belated
Oscar-win for this film was an apology for his many losses in the past (The Hustler included). There’s likely
some truth in that, but it doesn’t change how assured he is as an older, wiser,
but still deeply flawed “Fast” Eddie. He’s more cooly confident, and his past
mistakes make him a potentially better mentor to Vincent than George C. Scott’s
Burt was to him. But he’s still, to some degree, a loser- a guy who never made
it as far as he should have, a guy who never knows when to give up and move on.

The film’s opening monologue (delivered by Scorsese in
narration) about luck is all about Eddie- he never had any, and even when it
seems like things are going good, there’s a reminder like Whitaker’s young
hustler to show how he can still get the runaround. His romance with Helen
Shaver is a bit marginalized, but that’s largely the point- he’s willing to
marginalize the one thing going for him and risk loneliness for another shot at
the top. That loneliness, the sense of not giving up for another shot of glory,
is something Scorsese understands. The film gets a more hopeful ending than
many Scorsese films (though Shaver’s resignation that she’ll have to put up
with more of Eddie’s shit suggests there’s something sadder underneath the
triumphant blues rock), but that feeling makes it more than just a
work-for-hire.